A caulking gun dispenses a bead of caulking material or caulking compound to seal and/or to fill cracks, joints, and openings. A disposable tube, cartridge or other container of caulking material generally is cylindrical with a disk shaped base at one end and a substantially cone-shaped snout at an opposite end for dispensing caulking compound. Caulking guns generally include a receptacle or cage for holding the container of caulking compound, a plunger, and a handle. The plunger engages the base of the caulking tube. A trigger in the handle is used to actuate a plunger drive which advances the plunger and the disk shaped base into the caulking tube to dispense caulking compound from a tip of the snout.
The snout on a caulking tube is generally formed of a plastic type material and is sealed at the tip to extend the shelf-life of the caulking material. The tip of the snout is cut to open the snout and to provide a desirably sized and angled opening for dispensing the caulking compound from the tube. The tip of the snout can and often is cut with a knife or other handheld blade.
Several problems exist with this practice, however. First, a knife or other blade and/or a suitable cutting surface may not be readily available. Furthermore, most knives cannot provide a satisfactorily clean and accurate cut, leading to an undesirably jagged or irregular edge around an improperly sized opening. A jagged or irregular edge around the opening in the snout leads to an undesirably irregular bead of caulking material. As a result, the quality of the caulking job is inadequate and inefficient.
One attempt to provide a snout cutter uses a small blade welded to the trigger adjacent an opening in the handle. The snout is inserted through the opening and is cut by squeezing the trigger which moves the blade through the snout. Unfortunately, however, the distance between the portion of the handle having the opening and the blade on the handle cannot be consistently determined and a significant gap often forms between the handle and the blade. This gap may lead to vibration from the cutting motion and may prevent an efficient shearing action between the handle and the blade, thereby preventing a consistently clean and accurate cut to open the snout. In fact, the blade may move hesitantly or with a jerky motion to create an irregular and rough cut across the snout.
In addition, welding a blade to the trigger requires an extra step in the manufacturing process. The blade is extra material which must be attached to the trigger, and in so doing, compensation must be made for the effects of the heat of the weld and the addition of welding material. If the blade is placed in the wrong position on the trigger or if the trigger no longer fits within the handle, either because there is not enough space between the blade and the handle or because there is too much space between the blade and the handle, it is very difficult to remedy this problem during production. Fixing such problems requires even more steps.